Tag SEO

Your search engine optimization (SEO) may not be up to par, but you have several options to reclaim its glory. A few minor changes can make your website more successful, especially if you want to attract more qualified customers and gain a competitive edge in today’s fast-growing digital world. Here are our top 3 suggestions.

Optimize your website for mobile devices

Search engines have been steadily moving toward a mobile-first index. Numbers don’t lie – according to Statista, 47.28% of the web traffic in the U.S in the last quarter of 2021. And that number will only increase as more people get smartphones and tablets.

The most important step in optimizing your website for mobile users is to ensure it’s responsive, which automatically adjusts its layout to fit any screen size.

You’ll also want to ensure your site loads quickly on mobile devices, as people are less likely to wait around for it to load when they’re on the go. Make sure its text is easily read on small screens and underpinned by plenty of white spaces.

Create Relevant and Quality Content

Content is the foundation of any SEO strategy for small businesses. Create pages where readers can quickly and easily find the information they want. As such, visitors spend more time on your website while providing you with the opportunity to cash in on superior user experiences. 

Good content will get people talking about your business because they trust you as an authority on the subject matter. With trust comes action, such as subscribing to your blogs, downloading your e-book, or buying your product. 

Start with conducting comprehensive keyword research—finding popular terms in your niche. Next, create keyword-rich copy targeting the people looking for products and services like yours. But again, use the keywords naturally throughout the copy.

As for the quality, make your content informative. Include lots of valuable information that people can use daily, not just vague descriptions of what your company does. Your content should also be accurate, easy to read, and up-to-date. You can always use the help of a reputable content writing service.

Use Videos

Google cares about videos, and so should you. Blending text and videos gives Google the impression that your site is informative, boosting your search rankings. You can use videos as a traffic generator, as there are high chances of people visiting your site after watching your video on YouTube or other social media channels. 

Videos are an important asset for any business website, especially if you sell products or services that are hard to explain with text or simple graphics. An Orbelo study found that 54% of customers anticipate more video content from their favorite brands, and over 86% of marketing pros consistently use video as a marketing tool. 

Incorporate video in product descriptions, on your homepage, and anywhere else you can embed it into your pages. You can use them for tutorials and other educative material that can benefit customers who may not be tech-savvy or find written instructions difficult to follow.

Bottom Line

If you want your target audience to find your small business website, you must pay attention to your SEO strategy. As you dive deeper into the SEO world, there’s much to learn and implement. Get started with the above recommendations.

The year 2021 sounds so futuristic, right? But is this just a marketing gimmick, or is there something else to it? You’re smart; I’m sure you can guess the answer. There’s always something up our sleeves, but more on that later. Now, let’s focus on what brought us here – improving your web traffic in 2021.

You might be expecting a lot of web traffic from search engines, but that may not happen tomorrow. It requires more work from your side. These four strategies will help you steer clear of clickbait and grow your traffic organically in 2021. Let’s dive right in.

Video Marketing

Videos are taking over the internet. According to statistics, more than 68% of consumers prefer videos over other forms of content when looking for more information about an offering. So, if you want to drive this effect, you must use video marketing in your business in 2021!

Video marketing will give you the edge your business needs. It’s a high-value way to connect with customers and establish yourself as an expert in your field.

Don’t create videos just for the sake of sharing them on YouTube, Vimeo, or Facebook. Of course, you want to engage your prospects and come up with something that they’ll watch. But wouldn’t it be great if they found your videos when looking for a solution to their problems? Your audience wants relevant, helpful information about a topic they’re interested in, preferably from the most trusted voice on that topic. You can be that voice. 

You may consider hiring a video expert to create thrilling tutorials, about us, or customer testimonial videos that resonate with your audience and drive traffic to your website. It’s also essential to optimize the video descriptions for search engines.

The best way to capitalize on business videos is to integrate them into your other marketing channels, and embedding them into your blogs is an excellent way to start.

Mobile Compatibility

People love to browse the web on their mobile phones. Mobile traffic accounted for 54.8% of global web traffic in the first quarter of 2021. That means if your website is not responsive-friendly, you might be losing out on valuable organic traffic.

Smartphones are the wave of the future.

In 2018, 38% of the world’s population owned a smartphone. The smartphone penetration rate is growing fast, with Statista projecting that 87% of all mobile phone users in the U.S will have a smartphone. This, together with a growing trend in mobile searches and mobile-friendly web pages, are some statistics that prove the demand for an optimized site.

If you’re just getting started online, start with a mobile-friendly site and then create your desktop version. 

By getting your mobile site up and running first, you essentially optimize your website for the majority of internet users – those using their phones. You give your audience easy access to your product or service and make it easier for yourself to reach them.

Consumer-oriented Content

Good information doesn’t just disappear. People are using search engines like Google in their quest to find meaningful answers to their questions and concerns. These days, if you really want people to find your solutions, you need to help them first by putting together easy-to-understand content.

Remember that search engines now look for information-packed content that answers various queries posted by internet users. Writing for this purpose helps you grow your organic traffic and business.

If you’re targeting a specific user, the better you speak to their interests and the higher chances you have of converting them into leads. As such, research your niche, so you know who you’re talking to and tailor your content accordingly.

E-A-T

Did you know that sites with higher E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) value rank higher on Google? To put things in perspective, your site’s reputation, and your own, play a role in your ranking.

So, how do you build E-A-T?

You should keep an up-to-date blog and be active on social media, giving helpful tips to your readers and followers. You should also offer excellent customer service, add more social links to your home page (Google likes that), build your brand authority, etc. And make sure you resolve all issues causing you bad reviews.

To maintain a good reputation online, you also need to ensure your site has the basics right, including security and performance. Other critical must-haves for your website are about page, contact page, customer service information, and relevant policy pages (privacy, terms of service, return policy, etc).

Given that the content will be used to promote your business, it’s important that each of your blog posts have a visible author and an associated profile. Simply put, make it easy for visitors to learn more about your business and writers.

Conclusion

There’s plenty of traffic to be generated in 2021. And driving massive traffic to your website doesn’t have to be a hassle. With these tried and true SEO tricks, you can gain rock-solid traffic without having to spend a fortune on paid ads. 

Are you just setting out online? It helps to partner with professionals with proven experience creating content that people want to read and share.

ContentGenics provides effective and affordable bespoke content creation services allowing you to spend more time running your business. It’s a time-saving solution to driving more traffic to your site and building your thought leadership. Contact us today to get started. 

Aren’t you fed up with high bounce rates and low engagement on your site? If so, perhaps it’s time you check your website UX.

There several SEO practices to increase a site’s visibility on the web, including link building, excellent content, and email marketing; however, these strategies will remain ineffective if your website’s UX is mediocre.

Site UX is all about how visitors experience your site. Do they seamlessly find the information they were looking for on your website? Do they leave your site frustrated because it doesn’t offer them the experience they expected?

Undoubtedly, you want Google to find your site useful. But you can’t achieve this aim by solely putting up great content for your visitors. By accompanying your SEO strategies with great UX, you can significantly reduce your bounce rate and have more users complete the intended actions on your site.

That being said, keep in mind the following best practices of website UX.

1. Ease Navigation

To offer users the best experience, ensure that your navigation is straightforward. The aim is to minimize the energy your visitors spend to reach particular pages.

The further a user has to scour your site to get what they are looking for, the quicker they give up. So, ensure that your most important pages are at most three clicks away.

Moreover, provide some sort of map to simplify navigation so that your visitors can quickly get back to the home page or previous pages. You can achieve this by showing breadcrumbs or having your menu present above all pages throughout.

A breadcrumb is a small clickable text path, usually found at the top of a page as illustrated on the image below.

2. Communicate with Your Visitors’ Words

One of the top priorities of getting the user experience right is communicating in the language of the users. No doubt, you are an expert in your industry; however, your site visitors could be using different terms when looking for your products or services.

Here, the top tip is to avoid being overly technical. For instance, instead of saying, “Do you want more conversions?” say, “Do you want more paying customers?”.

3. Improve Your Buttons

Indeed, simplistic design works best for interactive elements, such as clickable buttons. However, the science of actionable buttons does not stop at the design. Give your readers an idea of what they are about to do using simple, action-provoking text.

Nonetheless, inserting some text inside a block is not enough to define a button. By adding rounded corners and increasing the depth, you make your buttons more distinguishable and clickable.

There are better ways to craft call-to-action buttons other than using the phrase “Click here to…” By focusing on the action you want the visitor to take when creating CTAs, you make things easier for the user, improving your conversions. Thus said, use words like “Activate,” “Download,” “Buy this product,” etc.

The image below from Crazy Egg shows an actionable CTA.

4. Get Creative with Links

For years, people have known blue, underlined texts as links. It’s now easier to eliminate underlining. Whereas this may seem cleaner, it may be difficult for users to identify the blue texts as links.

Changing the color might pose a new challenge, especially to colorblind users. However, this does not leave underlining as the only solution. Play with the font type, size, and capitalization to define your links.

5. Maintain Consistency in all Platforms

It’s incredibly important to offer a consistent experience across all access platforms, whether desktop, smartphone, and tablet. You want to ensure your visitors can access all the basics of your site, regardless of the access medium they use.

Keep in mind that an incredible percentage of site traffic comes from mobile users. If a user is not satisfied with the mobile experience, don’t expect them to follow up with a desktop.

There is an urgent need for website owners to work on their sites’ mobile-friendliness. If you’re building a website, it’s wise to start with a mobile version and then scale it up to desktop version.

Bottom Line

The best result not only comprises the best information but also takes care of the user experience. It’s for this reason improving your site’s UX should be one of the top priorities in your SEO strategy. Having lured potential customers into your site with various SEO techniques, offer them inexplicable experience with the above tricks.

Digital marketing is not a new word for most people looking to scale their business. Sure, the world is going online. With the use of traditional marketing techniques slowly fading away, it’s not surprising that you see fewer billboards today. 

Businesses are now turning to digital marketing to reach and engage more customers. Here are reasons why that’s a wise decision for startups.

Digital Marketing is Cost-effective

Think about the cost of setting up a billboard in a strategic location or funding TV or radio adverts. Funding such ventures is almost impossible for startups. Contrarily, the cost of getting your enterprise known in the digital sphere is minimal.

Making SEO work for your website traffic is straightforward. Take advantage of valuable, optimized content, improved site performance, relevant videos, and a good reputation. With ready-available templates and plugins, you can effortlessly build a business site that showcases your products or services and engages new and existing customers.

Digital Marketing Expands Your Customer Base

Traditional marketing methods are limited to a few targets, especially within a particular geographical region. Even reaching customers within your local region using typical marketing techniques can be tricky and costly. Contrarily, online marketing enables you to reach a vast number of targets without geographical limitations.

A large percentage of the world population can access the internet and can be easily reached with online content and adverts. With digital marketing, you can expect to enlarge your customer base and increase your sales and profit margins.

Easy Performance Evaluation

It’s easy for small businesses to track the performance of their marketing efforts, whether email marketing or social media marketing. It becomes possible to make the appropriate adjustments, with a clear view of where to spend your budget more and the campaigns to do away with.

Businesses can Target Specific Customers

You don’t have to interrupt everyone with ads. Using digital marketing methods, you can target a particular audience, depending on their location, spending habits, preferences, age, and other factors.

If you are targeting young women aged 26 years, living in Ontario, and interested in trendy handbags, online marketing tools can help you reach them and nurture them into new customers and brand ambassadors.

        Gives Businesses a Competitive Edge

If you are worried about competition when setting out, online marketing could be your timely savior. Strategies such as SEO, PPC, social media marketing, and email marketing can help you increase the awareness of your brand, attract more traffic, and score higher profit margins than your competitors.

You want to learn online advertising tactics that are working for your competitors and implement them besides others, to gain a competitive advantage over them.

Conclusion

It’s easier and almost costless to showcase your brand to a massive audience using digital marketing tools such as an optimized website and content and text and display ads.

The fact that you track performance and target specific audiences also makes online marketing a necessity for small businesses looking to maneuver around competition, maintain a more extensive customer base, and increase their revenue.